I’ve alluded to this before, but low energy work options are what keep me sane in an insane online world.

This is what I pull out to do when I’m having a bad day. They tend to require less of me and are therefore easy to complete. And they keep me working when I really don’t want to be.

What exactly are low energy work options and how can you use them to your advantage? Let’s talk about it.

Identify your low energy work options

I wish I could tell you exactly what tasks I mean when I say “low energy work options,” but the fact is that I can only tell you what those are for me.

What do you find yourself doing easily? What tasks require little to no thought?

If you don’t know where to begin, start by writing out your daily tasks. Then use your gut reaction as to whether each one is high, medium or low energy. This is a good start towards a roadmap of how you work.

Once you have this list, you can test out what is truly low energy and what may require more from you. And you can then adjust your list to make it even better. The more you experiment with it, the better it will get to predict what you can and can’t do.

Use the rhythm of your day

You don’t truly want to be experimenting with low energy work options when you’re in the middle of a bad moment in your life. You want to have an idea of what you can do before that and have those tasks ready to do. So that’s why you should start looking at the rhythm of your day now.

Notice when your energy is high and getting work done is easy. Then notice when you are more low energy. And of course notice when you are somewhere between the two. Do this for a few days and get an idea of where your energy is during different times of the day.

And then plug tasks into your day based on those energy levels. You can then adjust to do the work that matches your energy levels at different times of day. This will make you so much more efficient in the long-term, and it will make you be able to work smarter on particularly good or bad days.

Work ahead

It’s not a matter of if a low energy day is going to happen. It’s a matter of when. So the best thing you can do to minimize their impact is to work ahead on your high energy tasks.

The fun part of this is that I can always tell when I’ve worked too much on those tasks, because it will trigger a low energy day. But usually, I’ve worked ahead enough that it doesn’t affect my cushion too much. Still, be mindful when you’re working ahead to make sure that you don’t use all of your energy up and end up in a not-so-great place. I’m very much still working on finding that balance, so be gentle on yourself if you keep making this mistake.

How far ahead do you want to be? I personally feel the best when I’m working a week ahead. Is that always possible? Absolutely not. For those of us who just sent our kids to school for the first time recently, we’ve been sick for like a month. Working ahead is not possible and we’re just keeping our head above water. And there is usually some form of whimsy that gets thrown our way in social media. We can’t work ahead on whimsy. So just work ahead on what you can control, and you’ll be prepared for whimsy and low energy days.

But also don’t work ahead

The last thing I will ever work ahead on is low energy work. Why? I want to make sure I have a lot of it ready to do when it comes time to rely on it. If I worked ahead on it, I wouldn’t have as much to do. That means I’d likely stop working altogether. That wouldn’t be good.

Fortunately, my time is limited, so I do have to be choosy about what I work ahead on. If you don’t find yourself in that same position, use extra time to sharpen your skills rather than working ahead on low energy work. That will help you out a lot more in the long run.

Don’t judge yourself

Everyone’s energy goes up and down. Our work capacities change based on life experiences, hormones, illness or a million other things that we can’t control. If you are judging yourself based on your current work capacity, you’re going to waste a lot of energy that you could be using on getting some easy work done.

And honestly, I find that the more I stack up low energy wins, the more likely I am to be able to do some higher energy work. So keeping in mind that you’re abilities can change at the drop of a hat and being responsive to that change can eventually get you doing more than you thought possible.

What is your low energy work?